[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 121 (Wednesday, July 30, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5145-S5146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. DURBIN:
  S. 2712. A bill to amend section 455(m) of the Higher Education Act 
of 1965 in order to allow adjunct faculty members to qualify for public 
service loan forgiveness; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, 
and Pensions.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today I introduced the Adjunct Faculty 
Loan Fairness Act, a bill that would make adjunct professors eligible 
to participate in the Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness Program.
  Contingent faculty members are like full-time instructors. They have 
advanced degrees. They teach classes and spend many hours outside the 
classroom preparing for class. They hold office hours, grade papers and 
give feedback to students. They provide advice and write letters of 
recommendation. Students rely on them. Since most adjuncts have 
advanced degrees and, as almost 75 percent of graduate degree 
recipients have an average of $61,000 in student loans, they are also 
among the 40 million Americans with student debt.
  The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is meant to encourage 
graduates to go into public service by offering student loan 
forgiveness for eligible federal loans after ten years of full-time 
work in government or the non-profit sector. Public service fields like 
nursing, military service, and public health qualify. And many 
education jobs qualify, including full-time work at public universities 
and part-time work at community colleges in high-needs subject areas or 
areas of shortage. But other faculty members who work part-time are not 
eligible for loan forgiveness because the law requires an annual 
average of 30 hours per week to qualify for the program. For adjunct 
faculty working at several schools on a contingent basis, this 
requirement can be difficult or impossible to meet, even when they are 
putting in more than 30 hours of work each week.
  The number of faculty hours given for each class is calculated 
differently at different schools. Some give one hour per hour in the 
classroom while others actually take into consideration the time 
required outside the classroom. So, even as these faculty members are 
working hard and as their options for tenured, full-time positions 
become slimmer, more of them are overworked and undervalued for their 
work in public service.
  The Adjunct Faculty Loan Fairness Act of 2014 would solve this by 
amending the Higher Education Act to expand the definition of a 
``public service job'' to include a part-time faculty member who 
teaches at least one course at an eligible institution of higher 
education. They would still have to meet all the other requirements to 
qualify for the program, including making 120 on-time payments while 
employed at a qualifying institution, and they could not be employed 
full-time elsewhere at the same time.
  This bill would benefit someone like David Weiss, an adjunct 
professor from St. Paul, Minnesota, who graduated with $48,000 in 
student debt and, after 12 years of on-time payments, has $35,000 left. 
Like most adjuncts, David has dealt with uncertain job security. In 
good years, he is able to teach 5 to 7 courses a year, but recently he 
has only been offered two to three courses. He supplements his income 
from teaching with other part-time work. This bill would ensure that 
David and many thousands like him, could obtain credit towards PSLF for 
payments made while teaching whether or not he was teaching one course 
or 7.
  Unfortunately, for all their contributions to the college programs 
and the students they work with, adjunct faculty don't have the same 
employment benefits or job security as their colleagues. The number of 
classes they teach every semester varies. To make ends meet, these 
professors often end up teaching classes at more than one school in the 
same semester, getting paid about $3,000 per class and making an 
average annual income that hovers around minimum wage. This also means 
that, in some parts of the country, they spend as much time commuting 
as they do teaching.
  Nationally, \2/3\ of all higher education faculty work on a 
contingent basis, with low pay and little or no benefits or job 
security. In the past, these were a minority of professors who were 
hired to teach an occasional class because they could bring experience 
to the classroom in a specific field or industry. Over time, as 
university budgets have tightened and it has gotten more expensive to 
hire full-time, tenure track professors, higher education institutions 
have increasingly hired adjuncts.
  From 1991 to 2011, the number of part-time faculty in the U.S. 
increased two and a half times from 291,000 to over 760,000. At the 
same time, the percentage of professors holding tenure-track positions 
has been steadily decreasing--from 45 percent of all instructors in 
1975 to only 24 percent in 2011. The number of full-time instructors, 
tenured and non-tenured, now makes up only about 50 percent of 
professors on U.S. campuses. The other 50 percent of the 1.5 million 
faculty employees at public and non-profit colleges and universities in 
the U.S. work on a part-time, contingent basis.
  Illinois colleges rely heavily on adjuncts. In 2012, 53 percent of 
all faculty at public and not-for-profit colleges and universities in 
the State, more than 30,400 faculty employees, worked on a part-time 
basis. This is a 52.6 percent increase in part-time faculty in Illinois 
compared to a 13 percent increase in full-time faculty since 2002.
  Not surprisingly, in Illinois, 69 percent of all part-time faculty 
work in Chicago, where the cost of living is 16 percent higher than the 
U.S. average. Based on an average payment of $3,000 per class an 
adjunct professor must teach between seventeen and thirty classes a 
year to pay for rent and utilities in Chicago.
  They would have to teach up to 7 classes to afford groceries for a 
family of four and two to four classes per year just to cover student 
loan payments. Because they are part-time, they are not eligible for 
vacation time, paid sick days, or group health-care. So they would have 
to teach an additional two to three classes to afford family coverage 
from the lowest priced health insurance offered on Get Covered 
Illinois, the official health marketplace.
  Even though these professors are working in a relatively low-paying 
field, teaching our students, their part-time status also means they 
aren't eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.
  This bill does not completely fix this growing reliance on part-time 
professors who are underpaid and undervalued. But it would ensure that 
members of the contingent faculty workforce are no longer excluded from 
the loan forgiveness program for public servants. I hope my colleagues 
will join me in the effort to provide this benefit to faculty members 
who provide our students with a quality education.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

                                S. 2712

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Adjunct Faculty Loan 
     Fairness Act of 2014''.

[[Page S5146]]

     SEC. 2. LOAN FORGIVENESS FOR ADJUNCT FACULTY.

       Section 455(m)(3)(B)(ii) of the Higher Education Act of 
     1965 (20 U.S.C. 1087e(m)(3)(B)(ii)) is amended--
       (1) by striking ``teaching as'' and inserting the 
     following: ``teaching--

       ``(I) as'';

       (2) by striking ``, foreign language faculty, and part-time 
     faculty at community colleges), as determined by the 
     Secretary.'' and inserting ``and foreign language faculty), 
     as determined by the Secretary; or''; and
       (3) by adding at the end the following:

       ``(II) as a part-time faculty member or instructor who--

       ``(aa) teaches not less than 1 course at an institution of 
     higher education (as defined in section 101(a)), a 
     postsecondary vocational institution (as defined in section 
     102(c)), or a Tribal College or University (as defined in 
     section 316(b)); and
       ``(bb) is not employed on a full-time basis by any other 
     employer.''.

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